The spatial structuring of optical beams has been extended to matter waves, primarily electrons. This structuring of electron beams paved the way for the production of vortex electron beams [1]}, [2]}, [3]}, self-accelerating beams [4]}, non-diffracting beams [5]}, [6]}, [7]} and orbital angular momentum analysers [8]}, [9]}. In the case of electron beams, an arbitrary way of flexibly spatially programming a beam is problematic and existing methods for the dynamic shaping of electron beams are limited. However, recent progress could inspire to build a tuneable phase plate based on a set of needle-shaped electrodes producing a continuous phase landscape. In this work, we use electron beam shaping technologies to demonstrate that the technique can be applied in electron microscopy and show it is possible to create complicated far-field patterns that when combined with a novel inversion algorithm produce images comparable to those produced by raster scanning but using much lower peak intensities. The technique is firstly developed with a light-optics analogue toy experiment and then deployed in the electron microscope real measurement.
